December 23, 2022

Long Live Christmas

As Abel Frost sits down at his dining room table on a frigid night after a long day’s work and the glow of the tabletop Christmas tree is seen in the eyes of his little cat and happy dog, and the warmth from the reheated pasta fills the room just as the Christmas song from the radio winds its way throughout the house he thinks that he should have asked her to marry him all those years before.

And then he thinks he doesn’t know who she is that he’s thinking about.

She is a ghost of so many girls who could have been.

A lost prophet of the happy Christmases that never were.

“Oh well,” Abel says and devours his pasta, then some Doritos, a brownie, chugs down three Cheerwine Zeros, walks the dog, pets the cat, brushes his teeth, admires the frozen landscape outside his window and falls asleep into a Christmas world where regrets disappear like embers from a holiday pyre. --TK